of the big gun
from dawn till noon, and the clatter and glitter of the drill in the
after part of the short winter day, the atmosphere of the village was
altogether warlike.

The big gun gave Lil an added claim on the veneration of her admirer. On
the morning of the second firing she came demurely down to the field in
which the artillery experiments were conducted, with an air of knowing
all about it, and Schwartz, as usual, pursued her. The gun was sponged
and loaded, and the charge was rammed home under Monsieur Dorn's
supervision, Lil standing gravely by, and Schwartz grovelling in her
neighbourhood. Then the old _gendarme_ himself primed the piece,
and taking a torch from a boy who stood near him applied it to the
touch-hole. Out at the muzzle sprang the answering flame and roar,
and away went Schwartz as if he had been projected by the force of
the powder. Panic declared itself in every hair, and his usual foolish
three-legged amble was exchanged for a pace like that of a greyhound. He
had gone but a hundred yards at most, when reason resumed her seat. He
stopped and turned, and after a little pause came back with an evident
shamefacedness. Lil had stood her ground without the slightest sign of
fear, and when Schwartz returned she took to looking so triumphantly,
and superintended the subsequent operations with so much authority, that
I am profoundly convinced of her intent to persuade her slavish follower
that this was some new and astonishing form of bark of which she alone
possessed the secret.

Schwartz was most probably willing to believe anything she told him. It
is the way of some natures to confide, and it is the way of others to
presume upon their confidence.

III

Janenne is on the outskirts of the Forest Country, and in the shooting
season the _chasseur_ is a familiar personage. He arrives by evening
train or diligence, half a dozen strong. He sups and betakes himself to
the singing of comic songs with choruses, moistening and mellowing his
vocal chords with plenteous burgundy. Long after everybody else has gone
to bed, he tramps in chorus along the echoing unclothed corridor, and
he and his chums open bedroom doors to shout Belgian scraps of _facetio_
at each other, or to cast prodigious boots upon the sounding boards.
Then long before anybody else has a mind to rise, he is up again
promenading the corridor like a multiplied copy of the giant in the
_Castle of Otranto_. He rolls away in the